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Written by Kat Murrell, Contributing writer
Aug 25, 2011
Kati Heck works in a studio in Bay View. Her work appeared in a recent exhibit at Grand Avenue Mall that was coordinated by Milwaukee’s Parachute Project. – Photo: Parachute Project
Every city is like an onion. Peel back its many layers, visit obscure buildings and unseen rooms, and you never know what you’ll find. On the gritty, industrial edge of Bay View, along the concrete riverbank, is a neighborhood of boats and industry. Tucked away in raw, earnest spaces are artists’ studios. Inside one of these, I caught up with members of the Parachute Project www.theparachuteproject.org.
Makeal Flammini, along with fellow founders Jes Myszka and Ella Dwyer, form the core of the Parachute Project. Artists and UWM graduates, they started the organization in 2010. They’ve spearheaded what could be termed art interventions – short-lived, temporary projects that pop up in unexpected places, with a special focus on unused or abandoned sites.
Flammini explains, “I think Milwaukee is a really uniquely beautiful city and there are so many empty buildings and spaces. And, there are so many artists living in Milwaukee. Milwaukee, I think, can feel really isolated, and it’s nice to get people to move around the city and look at things in a different way than they would normally see it.”
The most recent installation is at the Grand Avenue Mall. It came about after the project contacted the mall manager in a shining moment of synchronicity, since the Plankinton Arcade is courting creative tenants for old retail spaces.
The project secured three empty stores for the temporary show “Herr Seagull and His Global Dustbreath.” The official exhibition, held Aug. 19-20, featured drawing, painting and room-sized installations.
The exhibit included a mock jewelry store. Signs proclaimed, “We Buy Gold,” complemented by large casts of gold teeth. It was a biting commentary on current economic times, indeed.
The artists who created the installations were Milwaukee-based Colin Matthes, and Kati Heck, from Belgium. Sitting in the Bay View studio where the project came together, we seemed a million miles away from Heck’s European home. But the genesis of this project actually went back five years to 2006, when both artists were part of an artist-in-residency program in Austria.
Heck recounts, “We became friends and since then Colin has been coming to Europe a lot and visiting. In May, he had an exhibition, and we (Heck and partner Gregory Brems) felt the need to come to Milwaukee and combine it – because I like it better if you have a goal on vacation. Not just vacation, but also useful. So that’s how Makeal came up with this idea, to make us both exhibit together.”
Heck has a brother living on the West Coast, but this was her first time in Milwaukee. She noted the friendliness of people and the support for their project. Her hometown Antwerp is a mid-sized city that she sees as having similarities to Milwaukee, particularly in the opportunities it offers artists.
“It feels like something’s moving,” she said. “Probably if you did the same thing in Berlin or New York it wouldn’t make so much difference, but I like that you can make things happen.”
Matthes, who is soon bound for an eight-month teaching gig in Ireland, also appreciates the quality of life Milwaukee affords an artist. “The great thing about it is that it’s cheap enough where you can disappear all the time. You don’t have to work 60 hours a week to have an apartment that’s really expensive. But working minimally or making the minimal amount of money, you can still afford to disappear and do other things. If I lived in a place that was more expensive or something, I don’t think I could do artist-in-residencies or things like that all the time.”
As we talked in the studio, we looked at drawings and pieces in progress, some for the “Herr Seagull” installation and also earlier work. Heck, whose painting style is highly realistic, with elements of satire, showed a drawing that illustrates other professions she might have followed, such as zookeeper or chef. I asked how she came to be an artist.
“For me, I was very lucky. Somehow, still studying in Antwerp, I had a gallery already and I could live from it directly. So that was easy, that didn’t make me doubt so much about it. And then of course, with the crisis came more difficult times. Then you do the whole sort of … thinking, you know?”
She gestured to the drawing and laughed. “You can see, I cannot do so much – clean shit, cook a meal, sell a sausage.”
As we spoke, the conversation ebbed and flowed between current events and art talk. On the question of art as an agent for social change, there was hope and hesitancy. Matthes and Heck suggested that art is not a panacea for all issues, but it can be a place for ideas and imagination. It can be a social mirror or an escape from the quotidian grind.
This sense of elasticity about the role of art is a strong part of the Parachute Project.
Flammini explains, “I’m not trying to make it sound so grand, but part of it was the idea of making it an inclusive thing by bringing in communities that don’t usually see art and believing that art has meaning to people. And, being able to access art outside of a gallery. … We try to make it an experience that anyone can access, on whatever level they want to.”
